31 January 2016

Dwarf Light Artillery

After three months of work...


Not the best pic, unfortunately. And I know -- I missed the mold lines on the wheel.


Stuff! In the Mail!



Stuff! In the mail!

Reading material for gamesturbation.


30 January 2016

Moving A-head with the Fomorians

I made two more molds of Fomorian heads, one with a single head, the other with the better four of the batch that has been sculpted so far.

My initial resin pull the other day must have been beginner's luck, because tonight I had a lot more trouble -- especially with that mold. In fact, it got a bit torn up from trying to retrieve heads from the cavity. I was having problems with bubbles at the small joint between the head and the "funnel" into which I pour the resin. I got better at avoiding this, but what really made the difference on the last two pulls was using a syringe to fill the head with resin.

So here's tonight's haul:


That's 19 good heads, four more that have small bubbles at the back of the head (simple fix,) and five bad heads. Of the five, I could probably reconstruct the back of three heads, or they may become the start of converted variants with some sort of headgear/hood. The other two are unusable for anything.

I'm still working on sculpting some decent tails. But for the moment, I seem to be on the tail fail trail....

I should start thinking about getting my hands on some more Reaper orcs (I only had the one) so I can see if I can sculpt & cast replacement feet, or whether I will have to sculpt them on each individual figure.

27 January 2016

Resin, Chaos, Fomorians, and Greeks



After many roadblocks, I finally managed to make a test mold and casting of one of the next round of Fomorian heads I've sculpted up (and there are more on the way.) I used one of the heads I didn't like, so if it all went bad I wouldn't be worried about the loss. (Original head, resin cast, and mold on right.)

As it turns out, things went better than I hoped. Both mold and resin cast were easy. And not a single bubble. Not bad considering that not only was it done without a pressure pot, but I also forgot to include a vent and had to poke the resin down into the head a bit! But I had planned on this being a learning experience, after all. Now on to a few more molds, more sculpting... and maybe I can eventually start cranking out bits for converting a swampload of Orcs-to-Fomorians!





I've recently finished a 120mm Greek hoplite for a friend. Just like my adventures in mold-making, this kit put me up against a pile of problems (including getting a decent photo.) But I'm finally done and hope to deliver it sometime soon. I haven't seen my old gaming friends in a very long time.




I've thrown my hat (or paintbrush) in with the Oldhammer Forum's chaos village project. I'm going to submit a converted two figure set, and have finished the first, Oswald, one of the the village children "orphaned" when his parents became chaos spawn.



Next on my table... more experiments with sculpting, mold making, and casting. The other half of the Oldhammer pair, some dwarf light artillery for the Marienburgers, some commissioned beastmen and fantasy medieval type humans, work on an overdue vinyl toy commission, and there's still a pile of undead waiting. I'm also starting (or trying) to really pull together ideas for solo & remote gaming. Could there be an actual game in the near future?!

16 January 2016

Fomorian Prototype


I've had an idea in the back of my head for a while now. So I finally broke down and built a prototype. It's a swamp dwelling Fomorian. It started off as a Reaper Bones orc, but got a new head, weapon, tail and feet. This is like a "rough draft" figure. If I follow through on doing some more, I would like to add more detail -- especially the tail and weapon. But this gave me a good enough idea of what could be done, and I'm pretty pleased with it.




Here's another photo, before it was finished, showing the scale of the figure next to some other big (and little) guys.



Not only did I have this specific conversion in mind, I also have something in mind for my theoretical Marienburg campaign. More on that later, but for now, an excerpt from "Marienburg: Sold Down the River."



But sometime after the departure of the Elves and the Dwarfs and before the arrival of Man, Chaos and evil came, spreading like a cancer from the north and the south. The Skaven, digging their tunnels like cracks meant to undermine the continent, burst forth from the abandoned mines and ravaged the surface. Within a few decades, the land was a ruin: the herds were slaughtered, the waters poisoned and the groves cut down. Marching like vermin into the north of this realm, they found the Fimir, a race of reptilian giants who themselves were remaking the land in their own blasphemous image.

War was inevitable. For how long it raged, only the Fimir and the Skaven know, and certainly no one is asking them. The Skaven built great castles to hold their conquests, and slowly they pushed the Fimir back. In the end, there came a cataclysm that decimated both sides. Whether it was a last desperate effort by the Fimir, an attempt at final victory by the Skaven, or even a rebellion by the earth itself doesn't matter. Great waves of magic washed over the land and the earth convulsed and cracked. In a night, the castles of the Skaven and the holds of the Fimir were thrown down as the very bedrock heaved, broke and sank. Their armies were destroyed and their minions crushed or swallowed whole. By dawn the next day, only the land itself remained, nearly empty of life and hiding its wounds under a thick blanket of fog.

09 January 2016

Another Update?

Shocking, but yes -- another update.

Two reasons for this. One is that I got Stuff! In the Mail!

I'm relatively new to the Lead Adventure Forum, and as time allows, I've been catching up on some of the great projects documented there. One of my favorites, and most inspirational, is that of DeafNala. If you like colorful, high fantasy, with some hints of oldschool (circa 1980s) Warhammer & White Dwarf miniatures, and comics like Gobbledigook, the art of Froud, Bode, Bakshi, etc. then check it out. All of it. Somewhere around page 201 there is a link to a Photobucket account full of photos, too.

Somewhere in response to my praise and worship, I received an offer of some mushrooms, and a significant batch of both painted and unpainted ones recently showed up on my doorstep.



They're even better in person! So now I'm churning around several plots on how to make use of them on my own gaming table. I'm a little intimidated about painting the unpainted ones, so I am trying to decide on a good way to paint them so they are different, but work well with DeafNala's own painted 'shrooms.


I have also just sacrificed some more of my much needed sleep in return for some much needed painting time. I really wanted to finish up one other thing of my own that's been sitting half-complete since... I don't know, spring or summer? I wanted a hodgepodge unit of beastman-esque skeletons. I painted half of them ages ago, and the rest included a few more that needed built, plus a few metal figures from the Cursed Company.



There's a mix of figures & minor conversions here. Stock figures include a skeletal saurus, orc, and two skaven from the Cursed Company, and two skeletal dogs from Mantic. The rest are 4th/5th ed Citadel plastic skeletons with various additional animal skulls & bits.


Now that I've got some undead out of my system (I had really wanted to finish a few more units by the end of 2015) I will move on to finishing a large scale hoplite I started a while ago and a few other things headed elsewhere.

07 January 2016

Back in the Saddle Again


I finally grabbed a few hours today to paint! As much as I need to wrap up some painting for others, I really needed to do something for myself (fun, no pressure, etc.) to de-stress a bit. Plus, I really didn't have that much time, so it was speed painting rather than nice detailed painting.

I painted up a small unit of skeleton guard (old 4th ed. Citadel wights.) Not as good looking or dynamic as the Warmachine Bane Thralls I used on my first unit of skeleton guard, but they have a certain retro-charm. Plus I got them in a trade for some other old figures, which is more agreeable with my limited gaming finances.




I wanted to use the old plastic high elf kite/heater (something in-between?) shields, but only have a few. I tried making my own by cutting thin polystyrene sheet to shape, heating it up a bit, then bending it around a wooden dowel. After they cooled, I did a bit of sanding. They're not perfect, but the look close enough on these figures. Below is a photo of my first test-piece, before I sanded it, shown next to an original GW plastic one.



03 January 2016

What's up, 2016?

Provided I can get back to the painting table sometime soon, what will I be working on in 2016? Well, like most wargamers/painters, that's subject to constant shifting attention... Although I do think I stuck to my one little project pretty well last year. I've got one or two things to finish for other people first. But after that, I've got a rough idea of some things I want to work on for myself in 2016. In no particular order, here are a few: